


Vigil

by blacktail



Category: Homestuck, Problem Sleuth - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-26
Updated: 2011-11-26
Packaged: 2017-10-26 13:38:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/283796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blacktail/pseuds/blacktail
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Droog shows he will not leave, one last time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vigil

It isn’t raining, or snowing. That is the first thing that feels wrong to you. There isn’t a cloud in the big, blue, sunshine-filled sky. The day is not cold and gray. It was good timing, they said—the ground had just thawed. It hasn’t been below fifty-five in three weeks, a brilliant day of almost seventy here and there. The world has been coming out of its deep freeze. The funeral happens immediately. It’s your name on most of the bills. The planning was the first thing you threw yourself into.

Well, the second thing.

It is a small wake followed by a smaller burial. He would be delighted, you know. Is delighted, somewhere. He believed staunchly in a higher power, in Death as a person and not just an abstract thought, in an afterlife. You don’t dare argue anymore. His coffin is white metal. It will never rust, it will never degrade, his final rest will go undisturbed unto the end of the world; you have made sure of it. White marble marks his grave when it has been covered. An angel with beautiful wings—and a spear—kneels over the stone, its wings spread. This is hallowed ground. This is a safe place. No one will ever hurt him again.

The rest of the Crew does not come. Boxcars and Deuce offered, but you can barely stand to share this time with the assortment of friends he had collected in life, never mind people who cared more for your grief than the actual loss of Pickle Inspector. It was unbearable, and you had found the offer insulting despite their very honest attempts at friendship. Slick had done his part and kept vigil while you tried to drink yourself into oblivion just to take the edge off.

The first thing you threw yourself into, before giving Inspector your last gift to him, was the man who had done this.

 _“You give me a mother fucking name right fucking now, Inspector,” you beg. It is all you want in this world and he refuses you. With his last breaths he is trying to turn you from a path of vengeance and save someone’s life; even with the loss of his own he is still a good man. He doesn’t even answer, just presses his face harder against your cheek. He is so cold. He has always been cold. Poor circulation, under sleeping, under eating. This is different. “Tell me. Please. Please tell me.”_

 _He shakes his head and the blonde mess of hair around his head barely shifts, slick with sweat. You hold him despite this. Despite the blood. His is all over your suit, the only hot thing left. “N-no….” He is denying you. He has never been able to deny you anything, and when he has you have tried to take it. There is no way for you to take this. You hold him against your body, because you tried to take the bullets out and sew him back together, but it is beyond you. You are talented but yours are not the hands of a healer. This has all happened so quickly that a hospital was never an option. He is dying and your hands are covered in his blood, not because you have killed him, but because you have never tried so hard to keep something before in your life._

 _“I….” You have no words. You don’t even care that Sleuth is in the room, bearing witness to the most intimate moment you have ever had. The Inspector’s long fingers wrap around yours. He is so pale. There is no color left to him, except for his eyes. His beautiful eyes, watching you the same way they always have. Huge, the color of clean water under ice, getting distant._

 _You don’t want him to leave. You desperately want this to be a horrible nightmare thrust on you as punishment for living as a monster. You want to wake up drenched in sweat and shaking, cling to the man next to you in bed, and make him show you just how alive and warm and obliging he can be instead of this cold, still, resisting person in your hands._

 _“Droog,” he mutters. You have heard the tone before. He is drifting off in your arms and wants to know you are there. He is not imagining you, the tenuous life you maintain together around heists and busts and dramatic foils._

 _“I am here. I will not leave you.”_

 _He smiles and his lips touch your cheek. His blood is now on your face. You kiss his jaw, his forehead, smoothing away the light curls around his face._

 _“It’s…n-not over.” His fingers give yours a brief squeeze. Sometimes you discussed what came after death with him. You could never believe in his spirituality. Not until now._

 _“Please,” is all you can utter. Please don’t leave. Please don’t die. Don’t let that one last breath escape and fade away. Please give you the name of the person who caused this. Please forgive you for everything you have ever done to make his life anything but perfect._

 _“Yes,” he says, instead of no._

 _“I love you.” You can’t stop saying it. You can tell from his face, from his body, you have seconds. “I love you, Inspector. I love you. I love you.” He feels so fragile. You can feel his bones, each distinct part of his body. He is so very thin. Light. He is nothing in your hands. You kiss his lips, one last try at convincing him not to leave you alone in a world of black and gray and red._

 _You are not successful. He is gone. You are horrified. You have caused many, many deaths, regretted few if any, cared for none. Death has shooshed you like a warm cup of tea before. It has never laid you open from groin to chin with a dull, hot knife._

 _Once is all it takes for Sleuth to tell you what he knows._

 

You stand alone after everyone has left. You will see him through his first night. You could not save him then, you could not protect him. You will do it now. All you could do was avenge him, all you can do is remind him that you will not leave him.

It was a routine case involving a cheating husband. It went badly.

You bled his mistress to death while you cut him into small scraps of meat that were distributed across a mile-square area for the scavengers. It had taken nearly a day. Your ears are still ringing from the screams. You would have gone for the man’s family, but it would have been disrespectful to your Inspector’s memory.

You have not slept since the morning of the shooting. It has been nearly five days. Perhaps you have slept. You’re having trouble telling reality from hallucinations. You cannot remember the last time you spoke more than three words.

Cold sets in with nightfall. You recall your last night with him. You dream it. Some benevolent being allows you to relive a simple time when your partner was still alive.

 _All of the windows in your flat are open to let in the night air. It has started to warm up after winter. Pickle Inspector shivers absently and you set your hands on his arms. Your body is like a stove compared to his. That surprised him, the first time he felt you—everyone always expected you to be cold and hard, like an autopsy slab. Your blood runs hot to fuel your body and your mind._

 _“I th-think Spring is ah, f-finally here,” he says with a smile._

 _“Mmm.” You don’t particularly care about the seasons. Your teeth tug on his earlobe and he shivers again, this time having nothing to do with the draft._

 _“I n-never understand how y-you wear three-p-piece suits in the head.”_

 _You shrug and kiss his neck, line your teeth up softly with the many scars you have left there, almost all of them at his request. He instinctively loosens but you do not bite down._

 _“I’m n-not g-getting much conversation t-tonight, am I?”_

 _It has been a trying day of dealing with bullshit. Snowman fucked up a heist by fucking up Slick. All you want is this man, under you, saying your name, now._

 _“Not right now,” you growl, and turn him in your arms. All you need to convince him is a kiss that tastes like chocolate and coffee, and your conditions of ‘all you want’ are filled. Then you can give him his conversation, at length, on anything he cares to talk about. You are happy. Absolutely happy. You wake up next to him in the morning and fuck him too thoroughly for him to get to work on time, then kiss him before he leaves._

 

Clearly you simply should never have let him leave your apartment. You should have kept him as yours always, locked away like a priceless work of art in a glass case, part of a private collection. ‘A Chance at Humanity,’ his placard would read.

Instead when you open your eyes you are sitting beside a grave. For a moment you can’t figure out whose it is. Then you realize you must have nodded off. You hate yourself again. You couldn’t even stay by him for a few hours without failing in your duty. There is plenty of night left, according to your watch. You were only out a few minutes. You still hate yourself.

You don’t speak to the grave in an effort at one last conversation. He is gone, you are well aware. You made a good show of your last conversation and you will live with it as a satisfactory goodbye, not a moment wasted. Now you simply watch. He always watched you, looking at you with his curious eyes, examining you as no one could ever stomach to.

 _The man’s fingers trace every minute bone in your head. Not your facial features, but the bones underneath. You think he would rather be examining your brain._

 _“Is my face really so interesting, that you stare?” you sneer._

 _“Oh, yes,” he answers, and gives you a sheepish smile. “Y-you know…p-p-people don’t l-like b-being…w-watched. Like…like this.”_

 _Your sneer only grows. “People are cowards who don’t wish to be judged.”_

 _“And…you do?”_

 _“I simply don’t care.” It is a lie. You care very much, in this case. It is early for the two of you. Very early. You are still certain he will try to run. You want him to judge you, and find you acceptable. You want him to know everything that you have done, everything that you may do to him, and still want you to lay him out and have your way with him. For him to know you, and still make you tea. To understand, and kiss you as you sleep. You don’t yet know that he will do all of these things and more. You still find the way he cares for people foolish, and the way he takes his chances with you stupid._

 _You do not yet love him, you still want to see him broken but begging for more. You will eventually realize that he is worth so much more to you, perfectly willing to surrender everything, while whole. You can’t imagine it as he does his examination, memorizing every rise and fall of your skull, but you will come to take more comfort than his ogling stare than cigarettes or booze or tea._

 

The sun begins to come up. It is going to be another stunning day. The horizon is yellow and pink with creeping blue. The world keeps spinning. Nothing has come to take him from you twice over in the night. You are freezing cold when you finally rise. Water has seeped into your suit and your skin. You will deal with that. It was worth it. You will sacrifice anything. You wait until sunlight pours down on his grave before you leave. He is safe. You will return often to make sure that continues to be true. For now, you will return to the base. You wonder if this is how he walked through life: Unsure of whether to eat or sleep, mind tangled up in thoughts and dreams and wondering, isolated and out of place in reality.

You do not have a great many regrets. Only the one, the last one, which started with operating on your partner and will never end. You brought him into your life as you felt you could. He had such enthusiasm for holidays when he remembered them that you enjoyed those with him just to see his childlike glee. You said everything that needed saying, because they were simple facts. You loved him. He loved you. Anything that stood in the way of that was met with the same brutality as anything else in your way, your perfect violence that, yes, sometimes left scars on him that he couldn’t remember asking for but never complained about. Anyone who said a word out of line was put back in line. You defended your corner of normal life with fierceness and without mercy.

It was good while it lasted. You just thought you would be six feet under first, or in a shallow grave somewhere, or in the river. You thought he would be the one holding you and begging you not to go and assuring you that there was at least some period in your life where you were connected to another person totally. You thought he would sit folded up in front of your grave and stop anyone who decided to fuck with Diamonds Droog’s final resting place.

Years later, when you die drowning in your own blood, Death will come for you. He will be a person, and he will look eerily similar to someone you used to know. He will take you through a door and have tea with you over pleasant conversation. He says he is waiting for someone. You say you are, as well, though you won’t mean to say it. He says you will have to pay for all that you have done. You know. You will accept that. But there is a third place at the table and you will not leave until it is filled. You will gladly go to your burning eternity if you can hear that timid stutter one more time, first.


End file.
